-The Times of India As political parties learn to set up central war-rooms in their headquarters during elections to civic bodies, state assemblies or the Lok Sabha, they are increasingly depending on private detective agencies to collect and collate data in order to gauge people's mood, select prospective candidates and know rival strategies. Sniffing a business opportunity, private players have come up with specialised services of providing ground report to political leaders....

-The Hindu   The Maharashtra Election Commission has sought the Press Council of India's assistance to check the menace of paid news in the upcoming zilla parishad and corporation polls in the State. “We have created committees at various places under the corporation chairman and district collector to look into complaints of paid news. We have also written to the Press Council and asked them to appoint a representative on each of these...

Cast your vote online in municipal elections, no matter which part of the globe you are in, is the government's message. Online voting has also caught the fancy of Norway, which has failed to come up with a well-tested system. The Panchayati Raj Ministry has directed the State Election Commissions (SECs) to allow this facility at the earliest in a bid to encourage lax urban voters to exercise their franchise. The State...

-The Hindu   In a volte-face that has created ripples in political circles here, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said it is now a “proven” fact that it was the Maoists who were responsible for the Jnaneswari Express sabotage. She had earlier accused the Communist Party of India (Marxist) of being behind the derailment of the train in Paschim Medinipur district on May 28, 2010, in which nearly 150 people were...

Four farmers were killed in police firing as a protracted farmers’ agitation against an urban water-supply project in Pune district turned violent on Tuesday afternoon. Several farmers and 20 policemen were injured, two of them seriously. More than 300 protesters were rounded up. A strong crackdown restored traffic on the blocked Pune-Mumbai expressway, Pune rural police said. Around 1.30pm, more than 400 villagers, agitating for years against an urban water supply project they...